Janith's blog

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Is it safe to assume that no one reads these anymore? That Kottu has finally moved on to the netherworld. That the old blogger crowd, now probably married and old enough to have multiple grandkids, no longer cares?

Good.

I love being busy, because it keeps the mind occupied, but I recently had quite a long exam season (abridged with Avurudu) and this left some time for thinkingz. Uh oh.

Profundity pundits on social media these days love to throw out phases like "if you love her, let her go know", but maybe sometimes the best course of action is to run away like the wind and let the ambiguity of "what if" keep you comfortable in those long, lonely nights?

Sappy shit, I know. This is why people lost their appetite and the blogosphere died in the first place. Oh well.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

The recent tear-gassing of a student protest has been the topic of much conversation, especially since the newly appointed government was seen as being much more student-friendly than the previous one.

Protests by students enrolled at state universities and higher education institutes are nothing new. Every year, these students cumulatively spend thousands of hours sitting/standing/walking/running from charging riot police in congested areas of Colombo. Ward Place, where the ministry of Higher Education is located, is the scene of near permanent sit-ins by students.

Primary, secondary and tertiary education is heavily subsidized in Sri Lanka. This has not prevented undergraduate students, selected for universities from impoverished backgrounds, from going through immense hardships to complete their education. The lack of funding has made research grants almost non-existent. The system is groaning from the stress it is under.

Yet when students react to their situation, it's often in a very confrontational and chaotic manner. Student protests gain the eyes and ears of the public, but not in a positive manner. The social standing of university students has diminished greatly among the general public. The view that they're a nuisance and lacking in discipline has become somewhat entrenched in the public consciousness.

New thinking and true creativeness is required from undergrads to get their message across. Instead of old, boring, disruptive, and potentially violent picketing and banner holding, novel methods of protest should be explored. Students should fight to win back the esteem that society generally holds such qualified and talented individuals in. They should show us why they're the exceptional one percenters who made it because they were at the right end of the bell curve.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

The premise outlined in the title is all kinds of inexplicable. While trying to grasp the whole wtf aspect of it, this old quote from George Orwell's 1940 review of Mein Kampf stood out:

Also he has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. [...] Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice [...] Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.